According to a status update on the facebook page of a friend of mine (which means it must be true), this quote:
”At this point we get into such difficult questions as whether a computer program can have purpose, or consciousness, or free will, or even a soul. I do not propose to address those issues now, because I am still chewing on the same questions concerning myself.”
is attributed to Guy Steele (whom fellow Wetmachanic Howard Stearns once told me he wanted to be when he grew up) in the book Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About by (“The Legend”) Donald Knuth, whose fondness for ligatures in TeX among other things, were oh-so-gently lampooned in the book to be mentioned in the next paragraph.
Of course such “difficult” questions are precisely the (ostensible) subject of the famous & brilliant novella Cheap Complex Devices, which you can read portions of right here on this very website, or better still, buy a copy! Any of y’all needing a nudge can start with this review, which gets to the heart of the matter quite nicely.
Related Posts:
- by Harold August 29, 2023 In July, the Media and Democracy Project filed a Petition to Deny the license renewal of Fox29 (WTFX-TV) in Philadelphia. The Petition rests on a…
- by Harold February 15, 2023 Every now and then, I do some legislative drafting. I tend to get pushback on my habit of including a bunch of legislative findings and…
- by Harold July 24, 2023 Back at the end of June, Canada passed C-18, aka "The Online News Act," a law designed to make Google and Facebook negotiate with news…
- by Harold October 12, 2021 This originally appeared on the blog of my employer, Public Knowledge. Frances Haugen, the (hopefully first of many) Facebook whistleblower, made one thing abundantly clear…
- by Harold October 27, 2021 President Biden has finally made his critical telecom appointments to fill out the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA). As expected,…
- by Harold November 8, 2021 5G has been accused a lot of ridiculous things -- causing Covid, causing cancer, causing autism. This article provides a list of 9 separate conspiracy…